While I think the teachers have some noble and worthy demands that need to be addressed, I think the union leadership is at best behaving cynically, at worst using whatever leverage they think they have to squeeze the most out of a system that doesn't have anything left to give, additional staffing like librarians, nurses, counselors... there are legitimate teacher needs for more. But the union leadership doesn't seem to understand the finance structure of Chicago Public Schools and how it is a limited pool of money. You can't just keep raising taxes year after year because legally they can't do that.